With an upgraded power system, Glow Flow can now run continuously at full brightness. This completes Glow Flow as a self-contained portable demonstration of Pixelblaze LED controller. I plan to leave it in this configuration for the foreseeable future, but the flexibility of Pixelblaze and the 3D-printed snap-together construction means it’d be easy to reuse the core components for another project in the future. The Pixelblaze is in no shortage of storage space for other patterns, and the LED strip wound around a cylindrical core can easily accept a different external “sleeve” tailored to a different design.

People have suggested some other visual patterns, some would work better with different LED diffuser exterior:

• Illusion of a lantern, complete with a flickering flame inside.
• Illusion of a fish tank, with colorful fishes swimming inside.
• Glowing lava, matching my original plan.
• Animated Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween.
• Glowing green like a bucket of radioactive slime.
• Glowing purple/pink like the Energon Cubes in Transformers cartoons. Of course, they’re supposed to be cubes and not cylinders.

Any of those are within the means of a Pixelblaze, but depending on specifics of a pattern, power requirements may different. Dramatically increased power draw would demand an upgraded power system as well, something to keep in mind.

There were two fascinating ideas to improve interactivity:

1. Make colors flow past each other as in a lava lamp. This is similar to earlier suggestions of making different color pixels swirl and mix. This requires a substantial investigation into how to run a computational fluid dynamics simulation in a Pixelblaze pattern. I’m currently ignorant on CFD math so that will be a significant undertaking.
2. Make the diffuser touch-sensitive so the illuminated pattern on LED cylinder can react to user touch. This is a significant upgrade to interactivity than merely reading an accelerometer. Experimentation with simple touch sensors imply smaller touch area is better. It would be challenging to make the entire exterior surface of the cylinder touch-sensitive, but the results would be worth the effort.

These are all great ideas for a future interactive LED project. When I’m bored with Glow Flow, I’ll remove the diffuser panel and their support ribs. Extract the core cylinder and do something else. It would still be a Pixelblaze project, but it would no longer be Glow Flow.

For now, I’ll keep the illusion of glowing liquid flowing inside a cylinder.